On Sunday, March 3, 2002, at 10:07 PM, Alain Fischer wrote:

> After a lot of hour trying to call the functions of my own framework 
> trough the FFI plugin,
> I have finally figured out that this work only if my framework is 
> installed in:
> 	/System/Library/Frameworks
> Which is not nice since Apple is not recommanding to change anything in 
> this location.

Yes, installing anything /System is not a good idea.

> What would be nice is if the framework location could be anywere in:
> 	(the application bundle of the VM) (the best solution)
> 	~/Library/Frameworks
> 	/Library/Frameworks
> 	/Network/Library/Frameworks

With CocoaSqueak, you can just add the framework in question to the 
CocoaSqueak application and recompile/relink.  This is probably the 
smoothest option, resulting in a custom VM with your precise 
functionality.  CocoaSqueak was designed specifically to make this sort 
of thing easy, by splitting off most of the grunt Squeak-VM stuff into 
frameworks.  This split turns the app itself into a tiny skeleton that 
is easy to customize.

Another option is to load the framework into your address-space 
dynamically, for example using NSBundle, which may be accessed through 
the Objective-C bridge.

> I have tried to found where the framework module is loaded in the VM 
> code when called
> by the FFI plugin but found noting. The only part which seem to run the 
> external function
> is a bunch of incomprehensible assembler code for me.

Whatever you do, the framework first has to be linked into your VM, 
either dynamically or 'statically'.

> I need some advice from the VM guru. Will it be simple to modify the 
> FFI plugin to find
> framework in the correct location or to develop a specific plugin ?

The easiest option would probably be creating a custom VM.

Marcel


--
Marcel Weiher				Metaobject Software Technologies
marcel at metaobject.com		www.metaobject.com
Metaprogramming for the Graphic Arts.   HOM, IDEAs, MetaAd etc.